Installing our system inside the case was pretty easy. This is not a normal case so we did have to go into the user’s manual and see how some things had to be installed. Installation should take you about 15 minutes.

Update: After talking with SilverStone we were told that the plastic holder that occupies the third 120mm fan slot on the bottom front is actually designed to allow users to store and route some cables. This actually works very well and with the included cable organizers you can easily route cables along the front of the case. Also if you install your video card before the front cage you are able to install long video cards, doing it this way I was able to install my Radeon HD 6950 without any issues at all. Longer cards may get blocked by your hard drives though, but you can relocate your drives to fit longer video cards. SilverStone has actually drilled more mounting holes than what the hard drive cage can fit for this specific reason.

I did run into a few issues and noticed some things when installing into the GD08. I had no problem getting my ASUS P9X79 Pro motherboard in the case, it is a normal ATX motherboard. It is probably a good idea to connect your SATA cables before you install the motherboard as there is not much room to connect them if your SATA cables are at a 90 degree angle. Once I had the power supply installed I knew wiring was going to be a nightmare in this case. There really is not that much room to hide and route cables.

Once I had the large drive cage back inside the case with my drives I had to connect everything. I was barely able to connect the power and SATA cables to my optical drive. Also these cables were hanging right over the top of the CPU cooler, something that was not that ideal.

The 2.5-inch drive placement is interesting, but it works. The cut-out holes allow you to easily connect your SATA and power cables to those drives. As you also saw in the video above long video cards are not going to really fit in this case.

With everything installed wiring was a mess. Once that drive cage is back in it is really hard to hide cables and get them out of the way. Because this is a HTPC case many people may not think this is a big deal, but bad wiring does not help cooling at all.